Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Part 1 – That Which Doesn't Kill Us
He's seen her before, the woman lying unconscious on his bed. Usually in the company of others wearing Starfleet medical blue, but a few times in a somber grey dress uniform, trailing along with other members of Admiral Marcus' entourage. Never close enough for him to get her scent, but always something about her captured his attention. She's pretty enough, with her classic English rose complexion, big brown eyes and chestnut hair pulled back into neat braids or pony-tails; her figure is attractive but nothing about her individual parts is enough to warrant the way his eyes are drawn to her again and again, lingering over her like a puzzle that needs solving.
Now, however, he understands. Lieutenant Molly Hooper, xenopathologist, is far more than the sum of her parts.
She's an Omega.
He clenches his fists, fighting for control as he breathes in the scent of the lovely Omega lying sprawled across his bed like the gift she is meant to be. No, he reminds himself, feeling the anger roiling beneath the spiking lust her scent has awakened, not a gift. A bribe, a means of control. When he warned Marcus that his Alpha nature would need to be chemically suppressed lest it spin out of control, the Admiral had promised to have his tame scientists come up with something that would work on his Augmented physiology. Something that would help him keep his baser urges under control, keep him from spiking into a full Alpha rut.
Marcus lied, and for that he will pay, but for now, there is the woman on his bed, finally showing signs of returning consciousness.
"Lieutenant Hooper," he rumbles, and she opens her eyes, gazing blearily up at him. He scents the moment she realizes she isn't in a room she recognizes, a bare second before her eyes widen in alarm and she scrambles to her knees, still too woozy from whatever cocktail of drugs Marcus had administered to her to make it to her feet.
"C-commander Harrison," she stutters, one hand going automatically to her head, the other continuing to support her half-crouching form, her blue uniform skirt riding up her thighs. He forces himself to focus on her face and not the delicious expanse of soft, pink flesh thus exposed. "Where…what…how did I get here?" Her eyes dart around in confusion before returning to him. "Where are we?"
"My private quarters. We've been locked in. What do you remember?" he asks, fingernails sinking deep into the palms of his hands. He feels a sweat breaking out, and knows this moment of control won't last long.
Her brow furrows in confusion. "Locked in? What do you mean, locked in?"
"I mean," he says as he reaches back to grip the door handle tightly enough to warp the metal, "that we have been locked. In." He rattles the door for emphasis. "The computer has been disabled to both voice and manual commands. I can't leave, and neither can you. Now. Answer my question; what's the last thing you remember before waking up here?"
She responds as he knows she must, instincts long dormant awakening to the command in an Alpha's voice; her back straightens and she clasps her hands together at her waist, her gaze drifting ceilingward as she forces her scattered wits to collect. "I was…the Admiral called me to his office, he needed me to do something," she answers after a moment's struggle. She nods and her brow unfurls as she begins to remember. "He said it was urgent, that there was an assignment only I could handle. But when I asked him what it was…" She shakes her head. "I think I remember stumbling, almost falling, and I think he…no, someone else…someone caught me. And then I woke up here."
She shows no signs of fear, not of him or of Marcus, even though both are threats to her in very different ways. He finds that lack of fear refreshing, intoxicating, but continues to hold himself rigidly under control, although he knows it is only a matter of time before his Alpha nature overtakes him. Overtakes them both. "He drugged you," Khan says, nose wrinkling in distaste. "Sedated you, had you brought here without our consent or knowledge, and then ordered me here to 'rest'."
She continues to stare at him, confusion still clear on her features and clouding the crisp, sweet scent permeating this room. His bedroom. He closes his eyes briefly and shakes his head, then snaps them open and pins her with his gaze. "Have you heard of Alphas and Omegas, Lieutenant Hooper?"
Her brow furrows again, and he feels a stirring of anger at the sight. No Omega should be so troubled – even one who is unaware of her true nature. He sees the signs, though, that his own hormonal imbalance is beginning to affect her: the sweat on her brow, the redness of her cheeks, the restlessness of her hands as she fiddles with the edges of her uniform skirt. "It's…humans used to be made up of three distinct sub-types, but that was hundreds of years ago. We're all just human beings now." Something in his face must give him away, because that wrinkled brow returns for a third time. "Aren't we?"
No, he tells her. And watches carefully as her eyes grow wider and wider with every word. As he explains that humanity may have bred out many of the defining characteristics of Alphas and Omegas – leaving the more even-tempered Betas the dominant form – but that the genes are latent in all humans. That such dormant characteristics can be awakened – and become dominant.
"Awakened how?" she asks quietly, and he sees that she is beginning to become aware of the precariousness of her situation. Still she shows no fear, and his admiration for her increases, even as she shudders at the onset of what will no doubt be her first true Omega heat.
"Do you know who I am?" he asks, because it finally occurs to him that she is taking all of this a little too well. It might be in the nature of an Omega to be submissive in the presence of a powerful Alpha – which he, ego aside, absolutely is – but he would have expected more fear, more protests, some sense of conflict in her heart, a change in her scent. At the very least she should be questioning her physical symptoms, and yet she isn't.
"Commander John Harrison," she replies quickly, and his eyes narrow as her gaze shifts. Not much, just the smallest bit, but that combined with a spike in her scent screams of a lie.
He moves before he realizes, kneeling on the edge of the bed, his hand reaching out to grasp her face and hold her immobile as he stares into her wide brown eyes. "You know who I am," he rumbles, not a question this time but a statement of fact. His cock stirs painfully in his trousers, but he ignores it. He must discover the truth about Lieutenant Hooper before anything else can occur. "Tell me my name, Lieutenant. And tell me how long you've known it."
"K-khan," she breathes. Her heart is beating fast, her breathing is unsteady, but unbelievably there is still very little fear in either her expression or her scent. If he were not holding her face so firmly, he suspects she would be tilting her head and offering up her throat to him. "Khan Noonien Singh, the last Earth imperialist. Believed dead for over three hundred years. I-I've known who you are for about a week, I guess. There was something about Admiral Marcus, the way he treats you, that just didn't add up so I went data-diving. He underestimated my computer skills," she adds proudly, and Khan feels his admiration for her increasing.
She looks at him defiantly, as if expecting to be attacked now that she has admitted her knowledge of a secret that only he and Marcus are supposed to be privy to. Khan's lips curl in a savage smile, and he releases his hold on her, although with a great deal of reluctance. "Yes," he agrees. "He did." He takes a deep, ragged, breath, hearing the blood thundering in his veins, and knows that his momentary clarity is about to vanish. "Do you understand why Marcus had you brought to me?"
"Because you're an Alpha," she says, speaking the word as if it were foreign to her tongue in spite of her admission that she knows his true identity. "And if I'm an Omega, Admiral Marcus…he must have not given you any suppressants, instead he decided to, to use me." Her face flushes and a her scent grows sour with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. "He's using me to try and control you, isn't he?" she asks.
Khan blinks at her in surprise, feeling yet another surge of admiration – and a further increase in the amount of blood rushing to his cock. If he must endure the mindlessness of an Alpha rut, at least Marcus chose for him a superior Omega, however accidentally, on which to ease his rapidly-escalating lust.
"He is," he rasps, lips curling in a dark smile as he brings both hands up to her face, tracing the lines of her jaw with the tips of his fingers and enjoying the dark curl of desire that flickers in her eyes. It might only be the irresistible tug of biology, but he can hope for nothing better in this bleak future world he's been forced to endure. "I imagine he'd hoped I would fall prey to my Alpha nature and simply take you without speaking to you first, without giving you the opportunity to understand what was happening. And now that you do know…"
"It's just biology," she whispers, lowering her eyes. "You just want me because of what I am. But none of this is your fault, I won't scream rape when it's over – at least," she adds, eyes flashing, "not about you."
"It's not just biology," he corrects her. "Yes, I'm an Alpha and you're an Omega and all I want right now is to fuck you until you scream my name, give you my Knot and bring you pleasure like you've never felt before – but that's not all there is to this. I give my word."
There is a hint of trepidation in her gaze and her scent, but her hands have moved to rest on his chest, and she shudders a bit, wincing and curling in on herself – typical Omega cramps signifying her body's readiness for fertilization, her reproductive system being forced into action because of his pheromones. "O-okay," she says, still sounding very uncertain. But her fingers have curled into his uniform shirt and she's swayed closer to him, tilting her head and leaving her mouth half open, an irresistible invitation to any Alpha.
"Don't worry," he says with a wolfish grin as he leans forward to nuzzle her throat, inhaling deeply as his fingers stroke down her arms, then back up again. "I promise you'll love every minute of it."